California's Budget Cuts Aren't Pretty

We need more cutting done, but we need to cut in better areas than what's being chosen currently. This isn't welcome in any circle:

Many high school seniors are still waiting to find out if they have been accepted into their favorite college campuses thanks to severe budget cuts that have forced public universities to increase the size of their waitlists.

Even top students with excellent grades and a strong extracurricular record are finding themselves shut out when trying to apply to University of California campuses.

This is the worst part, at least to me:

With more cuts expected this coming fiscal year, public universities are limiting enrollment and accepting more out of state and international students to help increase their budgets.

I pay taxes that support our state universities on the assumption that those universities improve California and Californians. If the reply to that is, "we need to run these schools more like a business and maximize income in order to maximize programs offered," I can agree with that--if I don't have to support that "business" with my tax dollars.

How To Make A Teacher's Week

Out of the blue this evening I received the following email from a former student. It made not just my day, but my entire week. If you're not a teacher you might not understand this, but we live and die for emails like this one:

I wanted to send you an email to not only thank you but let you know how over-prepared I was for "College Algebra" a.k.a. Math 111 a.k.a. the most failed class at the University of Oregon. Going into the class I didn't think i would have a very hard time because I tend to enjoy math. I was surprised to find out that an entire ten weeks was based on functions and logarithms.

I just finished my first week of Math 112, the succeeding class, and am happy to tell you the extra credit assignment for the weekend is to complete the unit circle! As I was sitting among my classmates who struggled to understand the concept of arc length, I realized how lucky I was to have such great instruction in pre cal. Though I still haven't declared my major, I am seriously considering majoring in Physics, which will obviously require knowledge of these concepts for the rest of my life. Thank you so much providing this knowledge to me, I wouldn't ever want you to think it goes unappreciated.

Hope you're enjoying the springtime weather!

Life is good.

I'm Not Blaming The President For This

I'm pointing out, yet again, the hypocrisy of the mainstream media in making this front page news when it happened under President Bush, but pretty much ignoring it under the current president (who doesn't happen to have an "R" after his name):

Gas prices have doubled since Mr. Obama took office.

Remember this picture from only 3 years ago? It seems quaint now, doesn't it?

Thursday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
1901.

Today's question is:
In what year was the NAACP founded?

Education Buzz

This week's is here, and includes my post about community service as a graduation requirement.

Was Einstein Wrong?

OK, so Time magazine isn't where I usually go for stories about involved math and science topics, but the title of this one was just too good for me not to read the entire article:

12-Year-Old Genius Expands Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Thinks He Can Prove It Wrong

Could Einstein's Theory of Relativity be a few mathematical equations away from being disproved? Jacob Barnett of Hamilton County, Ind., who is just weeks shy of his 13th birthday, thinks so. And, he's got the solutions to prove it.

Barnett, who has an IQ of 170, explained his expanded theory of relativity — in a YouTube video. His mother Kristine Barnett, who admittedly flunked math, did what every other mother would do if her genius son started talking mathematical gibberish. She told him to explain the whole thing slowly while she taped her son explaining his take on the theory.

Americans Are "Cooling"

They're "cooling" on the Tea Party:

The tea party might be running out of steam.

The approval rating for the 2-year-old movement fell to 32 percent in a CNN/Opinion Research corporation poll released Wednesday, the lowest it’s been since CNN first polled on the tea party in January 2010.

They're "cooling" on the president:

President Barack Obama’s approval rating and prospects for reelection have plunged to all-time lows in a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

Half of the registered voters surveyed for the poll think that the president does not deserve a second term in office, while 41 percent say he does. In another Quinnipiac poll released just four weeks ago, 45 percent said the president did not deserve reelection, while 47 percent said he did.

What can we learn from this? That Americans aren't happy campers right now.

One Reason I Support Having A Well-Rounded Education

Being "worldly" never hurt anyone.

A graduate of Dickinson College serving as an infantry platoon recently leader praised -- of all things -- his liberal arts education for helping his unit make military gains in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan.

One day, as he recounted in an e-mail that he sent to Dickinson President William G. Durden, the graduate, who was commissioned through Dickinson’s Reserve Officers Training Corps and majored in Middle Eastern history, found himself sharing small talk with five village elders. After he recited the first chapter of the Koran (which he learned as part of a class assignment), the first lieutenant earned the men’s trust, he wrote to Durden.

Soon after, one of the men handed over five small papers which appeared to be “night letters,” or notes left by the Taliban on local mosques or the doors of homes. Typically, such letters urge resistance or threaten violence to those who cooperate with American forces. These, however, were asking for help. “The three letters this man gave to me thus signaled a major shift in Taliban morale in our area of operations, and at the end of the day became very valuable intelligence information,” the unnamed lieutenant wrote.

This episode -- which demonstrates how core liberal arts subjects, such as foreign language, cultural studies and history can yield better-trained, more culturally sophisticated soldiers and officers -- illustrates the kind of thing that Dickinson’s administration and military analysts want to see happening more often. And, by ensuring that future military leaders learn on campus alongside more typical students, higher education and military officials hope to start bridging the divide that separates servicemen and -women from the rest of society. link

Totally Unrelated Papers Given To Me This Week Because People Thought I Would Be Entertained By Them

And I am :-)

click to enlarge

Memorization

There's nothing wrong with so-called rote memorization. I don't think I should have to familiarize myself with all the gauges and procedures in my car every time I sit in it. Some things are best learned to automaticity:

Memorization has long been out of vogue in the education establishment, and therefore many students aren't regularly tested for simple recall of new material. Teachers often emphasize learning methodologies like class discussion or concept mapping over factual recall, with the expectation that the former activities promote deeper learning that is superior to rote memorization.

But a new study finds that teachers who don't provide students frequent opportunities to practice retrieving information from their memories are denying them a valuable learning tool. It turns out that tests or other forced recall exercises aren't just passive evaluation tools. They actually help people learn, and are more effective than a number of other common study techniques.

I still remember some of the mistakes I made when Mrs. Barton drilled us in multiplication tables in 3rd grade, over 30 years ago. Drill and kill? No, drill and skill.

Wednesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
1905, can you believe it?!

Today's question is:
In what year were the first Nobel Prizes awarded?

"Consumable Manipulatives"

Today in statistics class we did a short lab--given a distribution (supposedly from M&M Mars, but I couldn't find it anywhere on their web site) of the colors of M&M's in an ordinary (brown) bag of milk chocolate M&M's, we performed a chi-squared test to determine if that distribution was correct. (Turns out it wasn't, so emailed M&M Mars and asked what the distribution is supposed to be.) For a week I'd reminded students to bring in a small bag of M&M's today, and almost all of them did. In each class we recorded and totaled the number of each color that each student had, and did our calculations based on the class total.

I got to thinking--I know that I couldn't get the school to reimburse me if I had bought them, as there's no way they'd pay for snackies even if I "needed" them for math class. Oh, I could probably get reimbursed for marbles and for the paint to paint them in six different colors, and use those for the lab next year, but that would be about as exciting as watching grass grow. What I need is a way to "sell" our comptroller on the idea of reimbursing me. I need better PR than just "M&M's".

And then it hit me. Consumable manipulatives.

I'm a genius.

Tuesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
1909—100 years after Lincoln's birth.

Today's question is:
In what year did Einstein propose his Theory of Relativity?

Anecdotal Evidence

I keep saying, ad nauseum, that the biggest problems with our "schools" is not the schools themselves, it's culture--the society from which our students are drawn. Used to be that if you got in trouble at school, you got in twice as much trouble at home; today, you get in trouble at school and oftentimes the parents lawyer up--that kind of thing.

A teacher at school today told the following story that he heard from a friend of his, another teacher. He had no reason to doubt his friend's veracity, and I have no reason to doubt his.

Seems at his friend's high school there was a dance. The DJ showed up stoned, claiming that his/her "medical marijuana card" (legal here in California) allowed him/her to light up on campus--in a district that has designated all its schools as "smoke-free zones". At the same dance, one of the parent chaperones showed up so drunk that the chaperone could barely stand.

And we wonder why the kids act the way they do....

"Value-Added" Teacher Evaluations

This is how it's done in Houston:

"It is too unreliable when you're talking about messing with someone's career," said Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.

She said many teachers don't understand the calculations. The general formula for the "linear mixed model" used in her district is a string of symbols and letters more than 80 characters long:

y = Xβ + Zv + ε where β is a p-by-1 vector of fixed effects; X is an n-by-p matrix; v is a q-by-1 vector of random effects; Z is an n-by-q matrix; E(v) = 0, Var(v) = G; E(ε) = 0, Var(ε) = R; Cov(v,ε) = 0. V = Var(y) = Var(y - Xβ) = Var(Zv + ε) = ZGZT + R.

"It's doctorate-level math," Fallon said.

Does Ms. Fallon have a doctorate in math? If not, how does she know the method is unreliable?

That isn't really the point. The point is that the teachers themselves can't really tell if the method is reliable or not, and hence cannot have any trust in the system. Trust is the real issue.

Monday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
1906.

Today's question is:
In what year was the first Lincoln cent minted?

Sunday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Discovery.

Today's question is, the first in Decades Week (1900-1909), is:
In what year was the Great San Francisco earthquake?

Vygotsky and Gramsci

Do you recognize those names? If you earned your teaching credential in at least the last 20 years you probably do. I certainly recall encountering them in my credentialing classes as well as my CLAD (cross-cultural, language, and academic development--think "bilingual") courses. Here's an interesting article that links them:

Months ago, an email from a teacher spurred me to investigate the theories of Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934). My research revealed starry-eyed academics enamored of collectivism.

Vygotsky contended that "creative play" could provide relief to children dealing with "tension" caused by unsatisfied desires.[2] The psychologist expounded on Soviet activity theory, an offshoot of "cultural-historical theory."[3] Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist whom I've discussed in previous articles, also drew on cultural-historical theory. Gramsci's "cultural Marxism" called for the intentional erosion of Western society. Since the 1980s, early childhood education has increasingly incorporated Vygotskyian techniques that answer Gramsci's call...

Two prominent psychologists find that Lev Vygotsky's "Marxist orientation" determined "his scientific preoccupations," in other words, his education theories.[9] Revealingly, nine years after Vladimir Lenin violently seized power and fathered the USSR, Vygotsky lauded "the cleansing threat of social revolution." Furthermore, Vygotsky cheered the crumbling of "the very foundations of bourgeois morality," insisted that the achievement mentality "be swept clear out of our schools," and anointed educators with the job of instilling a new morality. To Soviet Vygotsky, the best morality was Soviet collectivism.

Vygotsky intended to "create the new Soviet Man, the kind of being that would be needed in the Soviet society of the future." The psychologist conceived the "Zone of Proximal Development" (ZPD), a tool for reconditioning young minds and forming a new society from the old. Vygotsky aimed to deliver young collectivists to ruling class elites intent on "societal reconstruction."[10]

Ignoring Vygotsky's motives, the authors of America's early childhood education curricula train teachers in techniques based on the ZPD. A bit of investigation shows that education students are fed "grand" arguments and kept in the dark concerning "numerous underdeveloped ideas and contradictions."[11] The Tools of the Mind organization even admits that Vygotsky's theories are but "a specific set of beliefs." [Emphasis added.] The TOTM curriculum's effectiveness was tested only by a "quasi-experimental study" plagued with sloppy methods.[12] The truth is that there is simply no trustworthy proof that Vygotskyian techniques develop superior cognitive skills in children. Indoctrinated and misled, America's teachers are unwittingly using tactics conceived by a Marxist to spawn USSR-minded kids in the USA.

Teachers are also not informed that Vygotsky detested "capitalist culture," rejected Western society, and cherished the "tribal village." The psychologist prescribed a "moral education" blended "imperceptibly into all those general modes of behavior that may be established and regulated by the social environment." To accomplish the blending, Vygotskyian-trained teachers rigidly control the classroom environment and allow only authoritatively prescribed behaviors. Individualism is verboten. Gene by gene, the collectivist virus erases children's predisposition for achievement. Neuron by neuron, the bug weakens traditional morality. And teachers aren't even aware of having injected the pathogen.

Indeed, teachers faithfully condition children in Vygotsky's "new ways of interacting with people," unaware that those "ways" conform to totalitarian visions.

In one of my classes once, we were given a talk by someone who'd worked directly with Paulo Freire in Brazil. When I asked her a question relating Freire and Gramsci, her response was something along the lines of how much she "enjoyed" getting questions about Italian communists from American Republicans, and that she'd get back to me. Of course she never did.

Recent Issues of California Educator Magazine

My February issue was delivered to the wrong address, and I only received it perhaps a week and a half ago. I received the March issue yesterday.

I've said repeatedly that when a union is legally entitled to my money, as they are in California, they should be legally limited in what they can do with it; they should be required to focus only on member pay, benefits, and working conditions. I would not have near as much disgust with the CTA and NEA if they had to adhere to such strictures.

If you've read other recent posts here at RotLC you're aware that California is in a little bit of a budget pickle--we blow too much money on social engineering, we run businesses out of the state, and we tax the remaining businesses and people at rates higher than just about any other state in the union. Education is going to take a big hit in the upcoming budget, and if certain tax extensions don't pass, it's going to take an even bigger hit. I would say that's a pretty big deal and will definitely have an impact on my pay, benefits, and working conditions.

So what are the cover stories for the last two issues of the union mouthpiece rag? February's is about successful support for new teachers (won't be any of those next year anyway, after all these budget cuts and pink slips) and March's is about school programs for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students.

Looking at the table of contents in each magazine, the first reference I see to budget cuts or education funding is on page 34 of the February issue and page 32 of the March issue.

Remember, these people are entitled, by law, to my money, ostensibly so they can "represent" me before my employer.

Got A "Bargaining Update" From My Local Union In The Mail Today

It only covered two topics--the decrease in health care costs since our district changed providers last year, and negotiations in the shadow of devastating budget decreases. You know what word wasn't mentioned once in the entire update? Republicans.

Democrats run both houses of the legislature, a budget requires only a simple majority in each house, and a Democrat sits in the governor's office. Democrats, this one's all on you.